Cybersecurity attacks have increased by 400% since March, leading experts to make an intrinsic link between attacks and the coronavirus. Attacks comprised half a million Zoom user account hacks, unemployment data breaches, and an increase in traffic to popular hacking websites. Moreover, a whole city was subjected to a ransomware attack as computer files were stolen.
Ahead of the 2020 US elections, a cybersecurity chief has said that mail-in election votes and slower results are evidence that the ‘system is working’. Brandon Wales, executive director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is keen to stop the spread of misinformation in the lead-up to the election on November 3rd. He says: “The truth is that nothing about this process changes when the election will be officially done.”
Experts at Computer Weekly are hailing cybersecurity as the “next frontier” for the open source development model. A spokesperson for IBM Security reaffirmed the point, stating that cybersecurity will improve visibility and bring different silos together. Vice President of IBM Justin Youngblood said most IT environments were “dotted with security tools that protect a plethora of workloads on the cloud”, which could overwhelm teams.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has announced that UK healthcare businesses will be invited to receive free cyber certification and training. As part of London Tech Week, Digital Infrastructure Minister Matt Warman said that hundreds of businesses would benefit from the scheme, which is funded by a £500,000 government grant. Training will include updating all devices, installing firewalls and managing user access. Warman added: “I urge all organisations to sign up to the government’s Cyber Essentials programme which contains a number of simple steps firms can take to get the fundamentals of good cybersecurity in place.”
A new report has revealed predictions for the growth of global password policy enforcement software. The Global Password Policy Enforcement Market report states that we will see significant growth in this field by the year 2026. In particular, the study focused on production, consumption, manufacturing and sales. It also analyses crucial market dynamics including drivers, restraints, trends and opportunities. The full report is available online now.
The NHS Greater Manchester Shared Services has received the international information security standard ISO 27001. This is one of the first NHS organisations to receive such a prestigious information security standard, demonstrating their dedication to protecting customer and patient information from a wide range of cyber threats. IT Security Manager Phil Scott said: “There have been a number of major data breaches in the healthcare industry, which highlighted the vulnerability of the NHS to cyber-attacks. We wanted to reassure our customers that we are committed to keeping data safe and leading the way in cybersecurity, so ISO 27001 certification was the clear choice.”
